I’m a
broke-ass-queer-grad-student-single-parent-mama-of-two-barbarians (yes, that’s
my official title), and I’m here to report that I don't like Mother's Day. Not
even one little bit. Not because I don't think mothers should be valued, but
because I think a day in which Hallmark cards and crumbs in the bed on the
clean sheets that said mother will then have to choose between laundering and/or
sleeping on, and the wilty and weirdly dyed carnations are just not what I think
most moms want or need. They are most assuredly not what *I* need.
If we really wanted to show that maternal
labour is work that is valuable, that the raising of small humans into bigger
humans is work that is valued, we would need more than a day. We would need a
whole fucking revolution.
In the meantime, the massive explosion of
mommy blogs and memoirs and the mommy-posts that everyone complains about on
facebook (yes, I do recognize that some of these are annoying) are about
something bigger than a glorification of mothering (although certainly
motherhood is glorified. Just not in ways that are actually useful to mothers.
Someday I’ll finish a dissertation about that. You know, maybe). This massive
surge of mother-writing seems to also be about the fact the work of mothering
is largely unseen and hugely undervalued.
When I post (or 'overshare') about my
struggles as a parent, it is precisely because there is this massive amount of
work that I do – all of which feels like hard and consuming physical and
emotional labour - that is totally unseen, perhaps particularly so because I do
it alone in the literal as well as the figurative sense. This is the reason
that I get teary every time someone says to me: "I don't know how you do
it." Because, 1. Most days I don't
really know either (see my official title if this seems odd to you), and 2. It
is a small recognition of that labour that no one can see. The labour that
keeps me up at night in a way that my academic labour doesn't (although it does
too). The labour that is never finished, never enough, and always working from
a place of deficit (sometimes many). All of this labour – this work that takes
up an enormous part of my time, my emotions, my money, and my freedom – is
invisible. And because I so often feel unseen, I also feel compelled to make
myself visible or heard. I imagine that other folks who do this sort of
mother-work feel the need to be visible, and valued, also.
So, if you really want to know what I want
on Mother's Day, try this:
I want a witness. I want someone to tell me that they don't
know how I do it but that you’re really glad I do. Tell me they think I’m
beautiful, or amazing, or all kinds of fucking strong. (All three is good,
too.) Tell me that the work I do, that stuff that keeps me up at night wracked
in worry and guilt and exhaustion is important and necessary and valuable
labour.
Tell me that you *see me*. Tell me you see me in all the great, big mess
of it. Tell me you see me with my hair
sticking up, kicking a toy into the air in the pent-up frustration of constant
noise and chaos. Tell me you see me
putting on band-aids and driving to the emergency room and driving myself mad. Tell me you see me trying to hold my anger
and failing. Tell me you see me losing
my shit, being puked on, cried on, screamed at, bear-hugged, pillow bonked.
Soothing nightmares and anxieties. Being flanked in a bed that should be big enough for two extra small bodies but never is. Being late for school-run. Again. Getting that look about being *that* mom. Again. Tell me
you see me when no one else does. That minute after I’ve read yet another
article on special needs or broken homes. When I’m sure I’ve lost all the
little pieces of myself. When they’re
begging me to play and I just need to write. When I’m sure I can’t deal with
one. more. sleepless. night. When I feel
so lonely I cry, when the laundry is piled over my head, or when I’m wracked
with fear that I’m not doing this well enough for them. Just be a witness.
You can’t, of course. But for Mother’s Day,
that’s really all I want.
